Letters

4. De-cla-ra-ti-on: AMBROSE LOVES LADY AMHERST.

5. Ex-hor-ta-ti-on: Dear dignified Germaine: let us be lovers! Come play Danaë in this cracked tower! Muse of Austen, Dickens, Fielding, Richardson, and the rest: reclaim your prodigal! Speak love to me, Mother Tongue! O Britannia, your lost colony is reconquered!

P.P.P.S.: The sixth word, Ma’am, is for-ni-ca-ti-on.

P.P.P.P.S.: The seventh, ge-ne-ra-ti-on!

P.P.P.P.P.S.: The eighth and ninth — but seven will suffice. We have come to that sixth, Sixth Sweetheart: I declare a state of loving war upon your heart as upon a tower, which I will take by storm or siege unless, as I exhort, you yield in the great tradition of British triumphs and defeats: without a fuss. In letters to come (i.e., to go, bottled and corked, to Yours Truly on future tides) I shall fill in some earlier blanks. Till when I declare myself, exhortingly, my A.,

Your

A

G: The Author to the Reader. LETTERS is “now” begun.

“March 2, 1969”

Dear Reader, and

Gentles all: LETTERS is now begun, its correspondents introduced and their stories commencing to entwine. Like those films whose credits appear after the action has started, it will now pause.